Weaving stories in digital media : when Spielberg makes home movies

In this paper we describe research aimed at enabling amateur video makers to improve both the technical quality and communicative capacity of their work. Motivated by the recognition that untold hours of home video are simply abandoned after capture, we have formulated the problem as one of defining the what and how of footage capture. We have implemented a framework that answers the first problem, the what, by means of the age-old communicative powers of Story; the second problem, the how, is addressed by means of well documented aesthetic principles that constitute the film profession, which impact both technical and cinematic considerations for a given project. We provide a brief overview of the process, beginning with the narrative template, embodying a chosen story, through the principal phases of generating a storyboard, directing, and editing, resulting in the finished product. We demonstrate the interplay of narrative, purpose for the production, and aesthetic agents, and their influence on the automatically generated storyboard with examples.

The association between habitual diet quality and the common mental disorders in community-dwelling adults : The Hordaland health study

Objective Recent evidence suggests a role for diet quality in the common mental disorders depression and anxiety. We aimed to investigate the association between diet quality, dietary patterns, and the common mental disorders in Norwegian adults.

Methods This cross-sectional study included 5731 population-based men and women aged 46 to 49 and 70 to 74 years. Habitual diet was assessed using a validated food frequency questionnaire, and mental health was measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale.

Results After adjustments for variables including age, education, income, physical activity, smoking, and alcohol consumption, an a priori healthy diet quality score was inversely related to depression (odds ratio [OR] = 0.71, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.59–0.84) and anxiety (OR = 0.77, 95% CI = 0.68–0.87) in women and to depression (OR = 0.83, 95% CI = 0.70–0.99) in men. Women scoring higher on a healthy dietary pattern were less likely to be depressed (OR = 0.68, 95% CI = 0.57–0.82) or anxious (OR = 0.87, 95% CI = 0.77–0.98), whereas men were more likely to be anxious (OR = 1.19, 95% CI = 1.03–1.38). A traditional Norwegian dietary pattern was also associated with reduced depression in women (OR = 0.77, 95% CI = 0.64–0.92) and anxiety in men (OR = 0.77, 95% CI = 0.61–0.96). A western-type diet was associated with increased anxiety in men (OR = 1.27, 95% CI = 1.14–1.42) and women (OR = 1.29, 95% CI = 1.17–1.43) before final adjustment for energy intake.

Conclusions In this study, those with better quality diets were less likely to be depressed, whereas a higher intake of processed and unhealthy foods was associated with increased anxiety.

Understanding, developing and maintaining mental toughness in tennis

Eighteen (10 female and 8 male) recently retired top world-ranked Australian professional tennis players responded to a questionnaire that was developed to address future directions by mental toughness researchers. A series of inductive content analyses was conducted to analyze the qualitative data obtained from participants’ responses. These analyses revealed that mental toughness is a most sought-after dynamic attribute that encompasses a range of abilities (e.g., focus, work ethic) to consistently perform well under pressure. Further, mental toughness is thought to be ‘taught’ and/or ‘acquired’ over many years and can be influenced by factors that include injury, changes in a player’s technique and match results. Examples of mentally tough players were cited and reasons given as to their selection as outstanding mentally tough competitors. Sport psychologists, coaches, parents and other mentors were identified as significant members of a support team to guide and equip players to be mentally tough competitors. This study’s value to the tennis community includes practical benefits from gaining a fuller understanding of what is arguably one of the most important psychological skills in achieving excellence and enjoyment in tennis, namely mental toughness.

Raising the volume : Indigenous voices in news media and policy

This article explores Indigenous contributions to shaping public and policy agendas through their use of the news media. It reports on research conducted for the Australian News Media and Indigenous Policy-making 1988–2008 project that is investigating relationships between the representation of Indigenous peoples in public media and the development of Indigenous affairs policies. Interviews with Indigenous policy advocates, journalists and public servants identified the strategies that have been used by individuals and Indigenous organisations to penetrate policy debates and influence public policy. The article concludes that in the face of a neo-liberal policy agenda amplified through mainstream media, particular Indigenous voices nevertheless have had a significant impact, keeping alive debate about issues such as the importance of bilingual education programs and community involvement in the delivery of primary health care.

Towards a standardised methodology for estimating alcohol-caused death, injury and illness in Australia

Two key methodological issues underlying different methods for calculating estimates of the number of alcohol-caused deaths are identified and recommendations suggested for future work.

1. How to adjust alcohol aetiologic fractions across time and place to reflect different levels of risky drinking. A common approach is outlined for both acute and chronic alcohol-related conditions. In the absence of consistent, reliable and regionally specific measures of the prevalence of risky alcohol consumption from national surveys, the use of per capita consumption data as a means of adjusting alcohol population aetiologic fractions over time and across regions is recommended.

2. Whether abstainers or low-risk drinkers should be used as the reference group when assessing the impact of alcohol consumption and how the resulting information is best presented. It is recommended that when abstainers are used as the reference group, the costs and benefits for both 'low-risk' and 'risky/high-risk' drinking should be identified. Using this approach, it was estimated that for Australia in 1998 there was a net benefit of 5,100 lives saved due to low-risk drinking, while there was a net loss of 2,737 lives due to risky/high-risk drinking. On its own, the figure of a net saving of 2,363 lives per year is a simplistic and potentially misleading picture of alcohol as a net benefit to public health and safety. For public health communications, there is still value in providing estimates using the low-risk drinking contrast, of the number of lives saved if risky/high-risk drinkers all became low-risk drinkers (n=3,292 in 1998). The use of the abstinence contrast, however, allows the more complex picture of alcohol's impact on public health to be apparent, e.g. including the estimated 1,505 deaths associated with low-risk drinking (mostly from cancer).

Event extraction using behaviors of sentiment signals and burst structure in social media

Significant world events often cause the behavioral convergence of the expression of shared sentiment. This paper examines the use of the blogosphere as a framework to study user psychological behaviors, using their sentiment responses as a form of ‘sensor’ to infer real-world events of importance automatically. We formulate a novel temporal sentiment index function using quantitative measure of the valence value of bearing words in blog posts in which the set of affective bearing words is inspired from psychological research in emotion structure. The annual local minimum and maximum of the proposed sentiment signal function are utilized to extract significant events of the year and corresponding blog posts are further analyzed using topic modeling tools to understand their content. The paper then examines the correlation of topics discovered in relation to world news events reported by the mainstream news service provider, Cable News Network, and by using the Google search engine. Next, aiming at understanding sentiment at a finer granularity over time, we propose a stochastic burst detection model, extended from the work of Kleinberg, to work incrementally with stream data. The proposed model is then used to extract sentimental bursts occurring within a specific mood label (for example, a burst of observing ‘shocked’). The blog posts at those time indices are analyzed to extract topics, and these are compared to real-world news events. Our comprehensive set of experiments conducted on a large-scale set of 12 million posts from Livejournal shows that the proposed sentiment index function coincides well with significant world events while bursts in sentiment allow us to locate finer-grain external world events.

Cumulative morbidity and prognostic staging of illness in the systematic treatment enhancement program for Bipolar Disorder (STEP-BD)

Objective: Staging models may provide heuristic utility for intervention selection in psychiatry. Although a few proposals have been put forth, there is a need for empirical validation if they are to be adopted. Using data from the Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar Disorder (STEP-BD), we tested a previously elaborated hypothesis on the utility of using the number of previous episodes as a relevant prognostic variable for staging in bipolar disorder.

Methods: This report utilizes data from the multisite, prospective, open-label study ‘Standard Care Pathways’ and the subset of patients with acute depressive episodes who participated in the randomized trial of adjunctive antidepressant treatment. Outpatients meeting DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for bipolar disorder (n = 3345) were included. For the randomized pathway, patients met criteria for an acute depressive episode (n = 376). The number of previous episodes was categorized as less than 5, 5–10 and more than 10. We used disability at baseline, number of days well in the first year and longitudinal scores of depressive and manic symptoms, quality of life and functioning as validators of models constructed a priori.

Results: Patients with multiple previous episodes had consistently poorer cross-sectional and prospective outcomes. Functioning and quality of life were worse, disability more common, and symptoms more chronic and severe. There was no significant effect for staging with regard to antidepressant response in the randomized trial.

Conclusions: These findings confirm that bipolar disorder can be staged with prognostic validity. Stages can be used to stratify subjects in clinical trials and develop specific treatments.

Understanding of mental states in later childhood: an investigation of theory of mind in autism spectrum disorder and typical development with a novel task

The developmental trajectories of Theory of Mind (ToM) in later childhood and into adolescence have not been thoroughly investigated, partly due to a lack of sensitive paradigms that can chart development in typical populations or in individuals with a core deficit in ToM, such as those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present study assessed understanding of emotions, beliefs, and intentions using both an established ToM task (Baron‐Cohen et al., 2001) and the more recently developed Comic Strip Task (CST; Cornish et al., 2010). Participants comprised 12 typically-developing (TD) children (mean age: 12·0 years, range: 9·9‐14·8 years) and 12 high-functioning children with ASD (mean age: 11·0 years, range: 9·1‐13·6 years). Results indicated that the ASD group were not impaired on any of the ToM tasks relative to TD children. It was concluded that although children with high-functioning ASD appear to develop basic ToM skills, they do not generalize these to naturalistic situations. The comic-strip paradigm is suggested as a promising way to approach the measurement of ToM across childhood in typical children and those with ASD.

Nanofibrillar micelles and entrapped vesicles from biodegradable block copolymer/polyelectrolyte complexes in aqueous media

Here we report a viable route to fibrillar micelles and entrapped vesicles in aqueous solutions. Nanofibrillar micelles and entrapped vesicles were prepared from complexes of a biodegradable block copolymer poly(ethylene oxide)-block-poly(lactide) (PEO-b-PLA) and a polyelectrolyte poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) in aqueous media and directly visualized using cryogenic transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM). The self-assembly and the morphological changes in the complexes were induced by the addition of PAA/water solution into the PEO-b-PLA in tetrahydrofuran followed by dialysis against water. A variety of morphologies including spherical wormlike and fibrillar micelles, and both unilamellar and entrapped vesicles, were observed, depending on the composition, complementary binding sites of PAA and PEO, and the change in the interfacial energy. Increasing the water content in each [AA]/[EO] ratio led to a morphological transition from spheres to vesicles, displaying both the composition- and dilution-dependent micellar-to-vesicular morphological transitions.